Category: Web Design

Bounce rate is a metric you should be familiar with as it is important to SEO. It is also important to the success of your website as a high bounce rate is often an indicator there is something not right. This isn’t always the case as there are some situations where a high bounce rate is understandable. Most of the time, however, you should take steps to reduce bounce rate as much as possible.

What is Bounce Rate?

Understanding bounce rate is essential before you attempt to implement solutions to reduce it.

Bounce rate is the percentage of people who visit your website but then leave after looking at just one page. On most of the pages on your website, this is not a good thing. After all, someone who visits your website and leaves after looking at one page is unlikely to have been interested in what you offer.

Google takes a view that is similar to this too. Specifically, a visitor “bouncing” off a page is an indicator to Google that the person didn’t find what they were looking for. The faster the user bounces, the greater the likelihood this is the case.

How to Decrease Bounce Rate

Speed Optimisation

Users don’t wait around for slow loading pages. In fact, if the page takes longer than a couple of seconds to load, you risk losing the visitor because it is not fast enough.

If this is the case with your website, you should take steps to make it faster. Don’t forget the mobile versions of your pages too, as they should also load fast.

Internal Linking

One of the reasons that people bounce from your pages might be because you don’t give them enough options to stay. Internal linking where you add links to your content on other pages is one solution to this.

It is an essential solution, in fact, if your content includes elements that require more detailed explanation. If you don’t provide an internal link to that explanation, the user will leave your website to find it.

Having content on the page the interests and engages visitors is important too.

If the page is mostly text, you also need to make sure it is readable as large blogs of text and long sentences will put off visitors. This applies even when the content itself is fantastic – if it looks daunting to read, visitors will never know how good it is as they will “bounce” to find an alternative that looks less like a chore.

Adding Media

Following on from the last point, a great way to make your content more engaging is to add media. This includes videos, animations, images, infographics, and more. This gives visitors an alternative to reading text, plus it is often easier to explain a concept, service, or product in a short video than in words.

Target the Right Keywords

As mentioned above, people will bounce from your page if they don’t think it answers their query. This can happen if your content is not good enough, but it can also happen by accident, i.e. your pages appearing on search results for keywords not related to your industry, products, or services.

The solution is to refine your keyword strategy to ensure you target the right ones.

By going through each of the steps above, you will see your bounce rate start to fall.

You have several options available to you when getting a new website. One of those options is to get a WordPress-based website. In fact, in most situations, this is the best option. Here are eight reasons why.

1. Robust, Free Infrastructure

WordPress is the most widely used website platform in the world. In fact, more than 50 percent of all websites in the world are a WP website.

One of the reasons businesses, website owners, and developers use WordPress is because it is robust. It has a well-tested infrastructure and all the tools required to create any type of website. Plus, it’s free.

2. Strong Developer Community

The above point is made possible because WordPress has a strong developer community who help to secure it, identify bugs, and generally support the platform.

In addition, this strong community means it is easy to find help whenever it is required.

3. Regular Updates and Patches

WordPress patches and updates are released on a regular basis. These can be to get rid of bugs, to enhance the functionality, or to make the platform more secure. This protects your website and keeps it working in the ever-changing world of the internet, website browser updates, new phone models, and more.

4. Extensive Plugin Library

You can find a plugin for just about any tool or feature you want to add to WordPress. Many of these are free, but even premium plugins are usually inexpensive. In other words, you can add functionality to your WordPress-based website without the need to write the code from scratch.

5. Faster Development Time Compared to Building from Scratch

As the platform provides the basic infrastructure of your website, and plugins are available for all common functions, development time is kept to a minimum on WordPress-based websites.

One other option you have available is to get the website built from scratch, but this takes much longer. WordPress gives your developer a head start. This means they can focus on WordPress home page design with a customised WordPress theme to ensure your website looks great.

6. With a WordPress-Based Website, It Is Easy to Add and Change Content

Another of the big advantages of WordPress is the fact it is super simple to add and change content. The user interface and text editor mean you can add attractive and highly professional pages and blog posts without needing to learn a single line of code.

7. WordPress-Based Websites Are Easier to Update When You Want a Fresh Design

The look and feel of a WordPress-based website comes from its theme. All the features (via plugins and other code), as well as the content of your website, are separate from the theme. This makes it much easier to change the design of your website.

8. More Flexible and Powerful than Website Builders

Finally, WordPress is a much better option than other common website builders on the market. Examples include Wix and Weebly. They do make it easy to get a website online, but the options you have for customisation and features are very limited.

WordPress-based websites offer a range of benefits over free website builders. This includes:

They are much more flexible and powerful

They look better

They are faster

They are more reliable

And more

Choosing WordPress

So, whatever business you are in, whatever type of website you want to build, and whatever your budget, WordPress is the best option.

If you have heard the term backlinks before, it is probably in relation to SEO. In fact, most SEO professionals believe that backlinks are one of the most important factors to consider when trying to improve the ranking of your website on Google.

What are backlinks, though, and how do you get them?

What Are Backlinks?

The term backlink is used to refer to a situation where a third-party website links to another website. We just did it in the previous sentence. The phrase “term backlink” is linked to the backlink entry on Wikipedia. Therefore, we just gave Wikipedia a backlink.

Another term you might hear in relation to backlinks is anchor text. This is the word or phrase that makes up the link. In the above example, the anchor text was the phrase “term backlink”.

How Does Google Use Backlinks?

The Google search platform is based on a computer algorithm. Of course, that algorithm is big, very advanced, incredibly complex, and, as far as computer programmes go, intelligent.

It is still just a computer programme, though.

So, how can the Google algorithm determine the ranking of two web pages on the same topic? In real life, there are usually hundreds or thousands of web pages on any particular topic that Google has to rank, but for the purposes of this explanation, we’ll limit the example to two.

Google uses what’s called ranking factors to determine which of the two pages is better than the other. As it is a computer algorithm, these ranking factors are objective, i.e. page A has ranking factor 1 which is good, but lacks ranking factor 2, which is bad.

Okay, that is a bit over-simplistic, but you get the idea.

The fact that ranking factors are objective is important, however. After all, if a person was making the same decision, they would use subjective and objective reasoning.

One way that Google gets around this shortcoming (that it can’t use subjective reasoning) is to tap into the subjective reasoning of humans. It does this using backlinks.

So, backlinks are a ranking factor that helps Google decide which of the two pages in this example is better than the other.

For example, page A might have more backlinks than page B. From Google’s point of view, this means more people have used their objective and subjective reasoning in favour of page A than B, therefore it should rank higher.

Before going any further, it is important to also understand that not all backlinks are the same. Here are the main examples:

Website authority – a backlink from a website that has high authority on the internet will be worth more than a backlink from lower authority websites. Therefore, getting links from trusted websites that get high levels of traffic and that regularly appear on Google search results pages will help to improve your ranking in Google.

Links from the same source – getting a backlink from a website is good, but the more links you get from the same website, the less powerful or helpful they become. Google’s thinking behind this is that lots of backlinks from the same source don’t hold as much weight as backlinks from multiple sources. Also, lots of backlinks from the same source could be an indication that a website is trying to game the system.

Related content – it is also better to get a backlink from content that has some relevance to the content of your own website. For example, let’s say you own a jewellery store and your wife owns a construction company. Getting your wife to put a backlink on her construction company website to your jewellery store website is unlikely to very helpful to your SEO efforts. It is much better, in this situation, to get backlinks from jewellery blogs and other websites in the jewellery industry.

Do Follow / No Follow – when a third-party website gives you a backlink, it can either be a Do Follow backlink (which has a dofollow tag) or a No Follow backlink (which has a nofollow tag). The dofollow and nofollow tags tell Google whether or not the website wants Google to follow the link to see the content on your web page. Therefore, Do Follow links are the much better option.

Backlink Warnings

The above section highlights some of the dangers when trying to increase the number of backlinks to your website to improve your ranking in Google. After all, on the surface, there is a simple solution – Google likes backlinks so get as many of them as possible from wherever you can.

Lots of people have come before you with that thought, though, with many of them using dishonest practices to obtain backlinks. Over the years, Google has responded to this by implementing updates to its algorithm which help it separate good and honest backlinks from those that are trying to trick the algorithm.

So, here are a few things you should avoid when getting backlinks to your website:

The anchor text warning – it is good when third-party websites use keywords when they give you a backlink. If this happens too often, however, it can look like over-optimisation which can get you hit with a penalty. Therefore, there must be variety in the anchor text of your backlinks.

The getting lots of links, including paying for them, warning – this usually doesn’t work and even when it does, the positive effects don’t last. The much more effective strategy is to get good backlinks from high-quality websites on a consistent basis.

The source of backlinks warning – there are steps you can take to encourage websites to give you backlinks, but they should come in naturally. The example above of a jewellery website getting a backlink from a construction company is a good example of a forced or unnatural backlink strategy.

If you can’t do these things, what can you do to get backlinks to your website? There are lots of strategies and methods you can use that are all above board. However, they all centre around one essential and indispensable point… a point which is our number one tip for getting backlinks.

Number 1 Tip for Getting Backlinks

Create content that is valuable to your readers and that they love reading.

People will give you backlinks without you even asking them if you create fantastic content on your website. This could be infographics, blogs, articles, reports, white papers, discussion documents, help guides, or anything else that will be helpful, informative, or entertaining for your audience.

The more of this type of content you create, the more good-quality and useful backlinks you will get.

A simple Google search for the best website platforms will return names like Shopify, WIX, Weebly, WordPress, and more. However, if you’re looking for a list ordered by popularity, WordPress will always come on top.

So, how did a blogging platform become the number one choice for business websites in New Zealand and elsewhere in the world? Let’s have a look at why WordPress is so popular.

1. It’s Free and Constantly Updated

Despite being one of the most popular CMS (Content Management Systems) out there, the WordPress platform is free to download. In addition, all WordPress users get full access to feature and security updates.

Furthermore, WordPress is open-source. This means developers from all over the world can work on improving the platform, plus there is a strong community supporting the entire project. This gives users access to plenty of information, tools, tutorials, and other valuable elements that you can’t find for free (or at all) with other platforms.

There are also tens of thousands of WordPress plugins available to enhance the functionality of your website, as well as themes to customise the appearance.

What does this all mean to you? After all, most of the above is more relevant to your website developer than you.

The above is important, however, as it means your website developer doesn’t have to code the website from scratch. Instead, they use WordPress as the basis for the code, plus they can also customise plugins and themes. This reduces development times and costs.

In addition, the strength of the WordPress CMS and community means it is a robust platform to build your website on.

2. The Platform is Highly Flexible

Back in 2003, when WordPress was first released, it was a blogging platform. However, the CMS evolved in the last 15 years and, nowadays, is a fully-grown online system that allows users to create any type of website they want.

For instance, WordPress can be used for business brochure websites, portfolio sites, e-commerce websites, membership websites, business presentation pages, galleries, blogs, personal sites, and a lot more.

One of the secrets to its success is the clean, easy to use, and simple interface that can then be transformed using themes and plugins.

3: You Are in Control

There’s nothing more frustrating than working with a framework that doesn’t allow full freedom. This is one of the reasons why the WordPress platform is more popular than website builders such as WIX, Squarespace, or Weebly.

Plus, while a lot of website builders claim to be free, most are not. For example, many offer a built-in eCommerce system while not allowing in-depth customisation or expansion unless you buy expensive plugins (and sometimes not at all). Also, many have fixed hosting, which may not be the best option for your needs.

There’s also the problem of code editing with website builders as you don’t have access to all the files.

Speaking of code, website builders don’t all use the standard combination of HTML5, JavaScript, CSS, and/or PHP. Some platforms use unique languages instead, that can only be understood by someone specialised in working with the platform. This is yet another example of website builders being difficult to customise.

You have none of these problems with WordPress, however.

In Conclusion

Overall, WordPress is a platform that gives you and your website developer in Auckland the freedom to create any type of site. It will also give you the foundation you need to get your website launched and improve your online reach.

There are lots of reasons why website developers in Auckland like using WordPress. There are also benefits to you of getting a website built on the WordPress platform. In terms of the latter, those benefits include shorter development times and lower costs.

What happens when the website developer finishes and gives the site to you? Are there any benefits to owning a website built using the WordPress platform? Or will it present you with challenges?

The answer is most definitely the former – there are benefits to owning a WordPress website. Here are the four main ones.

1. Anyone Can Use It

According to a 2017 W3Tech survey, WordPress holds 59 percent of the market share and is used by 31.9 percent of all websites. This makes it the most popular CMS on the market.

The main reason for this popularity is its ease of use.

Of course, it takes a high level of technical expertise to properly develop and design a good WordPress website. Once your developer hands the website over to you, however, the platform is easy to use.

In fact, you don’t have to be tech savvy at all to understand the user-friendly interface, plus there are lots of manuals and tutorials (written and video) if you need pointers.

2. Low Maintenance Costs

When compared to other open-source platforms such as Joomla or Drupal, customisation and maintenance costs are significantly lower on WordPress websites. Also, WordPress is a reliable platform and there are plenty of developers continuously working to solve any issues that may show up in testing.

Even more important, there are lots of WordPress developers in Auckland and elsewhere, which reduces the costs of customisation. In other words, you don’t have to go back to the developer who originally built your website if you want to give it a new look or add new functionality. Instead, you simply need a website developer in Auckland who understands WordPress, which most do.

The tools available for content creation are among the most powerful and elegant on the market right now and they provide help for both beginner and advanced users.

For instance, as the admin of a WordPress website, you can setup multiple users as contributors or editors. Also, posts can be scheduled in advance, which allows you to work on a long-term content strategy.

Finally, the formatting and media tools available in WordPress make creating a post as easy as writing a Word document, i.e. no coding skills are necessary!

4. Built-in SEO

Another feature that makes WordPress so popular is the built-in SEO. The CMS automatically generates title tags, for example, which are useful in the race for a better place on search results pages.

In addition, WordPress also offers access to a wide range of tools and plugins (free and paid) that take SEO several steps further. Plugins and tools like Yoast SEO, Schema, or Broken Link Checker are great for optimising your website and helping you stay ahead of the competition.

Summary

As you can see, WordPress is not just a website development tool. It is also a powerful platform that makes owning and updating a website easy, plus it helps make your digital marketing efforts a success.

A crucial part of all good website design is Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). More specifically, a good website designer will put the right SEO foundation in place, so you can improve or maintain your website’s position on Google search results pages.

Two important components of SEO in website design which are often overlooked, however, are page titles and meta descriptions. When a website designer doesn’t place enough emphasis on them, you end up with auto-generated versions that will not deliver for your business.

This is despite the fact that page titles and meta descriptions play a huge role in the success of your website in Google search, not least because page titles are one of the search giant’s key ranking factors.

When getting a new website designed, here’s what you need to know about page titles and meta descriptions.

The Role of Page Titles and Meta Descriptions in SEO

In technical terms, page titles are an HTML element – or tag – which lets Google and other search engines know the title of a webpage. If you’re writing a blog entry, it is the title of the blog. If you are writing copy for your sales page, it is the title of your sales page.

It is important to remember, however, that when we discuss page titles, we are not talking about headings. Headings use header tags (H1, H2, etc) and they are completely different things.

Page titles go in the middle of <title></title> HTML tags. While that is technical, it is important as Google uses page titles to help it understand the content of the page. If you don’t use the correct HTML tag, it can’t do this.

You can see page titles on every search results page – they are the clickable headline for each search result. Therefore, page titles are important for SEO and user experience. As a result, page titles should be a concise and accurate reflection of the content on the page.

Meta descriptions, on the other hand, are short descriptions which summarise the content of your page for the benefit of search engines and the end-user. While meta descriptions are nowhere near as important as they used to be for SEO purposes, they still help.

Specifically, they help encourage Google search users to click on your website rather than one of your competitors. This is because the main function of a meta description is to display a short piece of information underneath the title in search engine results.

In summary:

Page titles help Google understand what your web page is about

Google uses this information to help it decide where to rank your website on its search results pages

Google also displays the page title on its search results pages

It displays the page’s meta description too

Both help convince users to click on your link

Writing Page Titles That Are Clickable

As page titles are so important both in terms of SEO and your click-through rate, knowing how to write them properly is crucial. In fact, taking the time to write an effective page title is a simple, high-impact task which can give your SEO a major boost.

Here are five simple tips to help you write killer page titles:

1. Keep Your Page Titles Concise – But Not Too Concise

Google simply cuts page titles that are too long, so users won’t see the full wording on a search results page. On the flip side, nobody is going to click on something which is half-complete.

The general rule is to keep page titles between 40 and 70 characters.

For a more technical explanation, the exact limit for a page title is based on a 600-pixel box. This is the width Google allocates to the page title. So, if your page title has lots of wide letters such as “W” or “O”, you are going to have less pixel space to play with. If, however, your page title features letters like “I” or lowercase letters such as “t” and “p”, you will fit more in.

2. Use Keywords Wisely but Don’t Spam

If you stuff your page title full of keywords, Google will penalise you and you will not rank very well. After all, page titles that are a list of keywords or keyword variations do nothing to improve user experience. Quite the opposite, in fact, which is why Google takes it so seriously.

Don’t try to outsmart Google, either, as its algorithm is now very good at spotting spammy page titles.

That said, your page title should include the main keyword of the page. In fact, this is critically important to SEO. Ideally, place the keyword at the start of the page title. While on the topic, it is also helpful to include the page’s keyword in your meta description.

3. Avoid Other Spam Triggers

Avoid anything else in your page title which could be considered as spam. A good example is the unnecessary use of capital letters – avoid this and instead use normal sentence or title capitalisation.

Another example is the use of special characters such as $ or ! or *. You should avoid using these too.

4. Write with Your Target Market in Mind

If you don’t focus on your target market through your title, what’s the point? After all, these are the people you are trying to make click on it.

So, write your titles in a way in a way that will attract clicks from people who are likely to have an interest in your product, service, or what you have to say.

Remember, your page titles are a potential visitor’s very first interaction with you when they find your website through a search engine result. This highlights the importance of writing page titles that present your brand in the best light possible.

5. Avoid Writing Page Titles that Could Be Considered as Clickbait

Clickbait is a term that often refers to page titles. Specifically, page titles that sensationalise or misrepresent the actual content on the page in order to get people to visit.

For some, it is a tempting approach, particularly if you are in a competitive market. However, the best advice when doing anything in relation to SEO is to never lose focus on users.

It is not hard to see that clickbait page titles do not add anything of value to users. In most cases, in fact, they cause frustration and annoyance.

Your page title can be confident, but you should never drift into sensationalism and you should always ensure the content behind the title delivers on expectations.

The SEO Payoff

Page titles and meta descriptions, particularly the former, are too often ignored by website designers. One of the reasons for this is that modern website design platforms will automatically fill in the gap to ensure your web page works.

However, this approach results in page titles that are not optimised so won’t help your SEO. By manually writing and optimising, you will get a competitive edge.

Smartphones are not just for younger generations anymore. In fact, one of the fastest growing demographics for smartphone and general smart device usage is the 55 – 64 age bracket. In other words, smartphones have taken a serious grip on our society and, for many of us, they are the first things we check when we wake up in the morning, we carry them around with us always, and we use them more and more for day-to-day tasks.

Consequently, smartphones have changed the way we engage with not just each other, but the internet itself. One area where smartphones have had the largest impact is SEO as mobile SEO helps businesses and brands reach potential customers. Therefore, it is not something which can be ignored.

Why is Mobile SEO Important?

Mobile traffic towers over desktop-based traffic. Each day, more people become reliant on smartphones to perform even the most basic of tasks. They are all-encompassing pieces of technology which house our lives. To take advantage of this and reach the people using them, you need to have a mobile SEO strategy.

Google studies have shown that smartphone users have more buying intent than their desktop counterparts – these people are there and waiting, ready to buy, and it is your job to ensure your website is one of the first results they see when performing a Google search.

Many webmasters assume there is no difference between desktop and mobile SEO, however. This is wrong. Yes, desktop SEO tactics do work for mobile SEO in some ways. However, desktop SEO and mobile SEO are not wholly interchangeable, so it is best practice to have two separate SEO strategies.

Google is Beginning to Prioritise Mobile

This year, Google will switch to a mobile-first index, making the importance of mobile SEO clear beyond doubt.

What does this mean? Previously, Google stored the desktop version of your website in its index. Now, however, it will use the mobile version instead. This doesn’t mean it will ignore the desktop version of your site. Instead, it now gives greater priority to the mobile version.

Even if your website is not geared towards a smartphone audience you still need to optimise it for mobile. The most efficient approach is to make your website responsive. If you don’t have a responsive website yet, you should make this your number one digital marketing priority. As a website development and SEO company in Auckland, we can help you do this.

What Does Google See As “Mobile”?

Many people consider smartphones and tablets as mobile devices. However, Google categorises tablets as devices in their own right and does not include them under the “mobile” umbrella.

This means Google only considers smartphones to be mobile devices. This isn’t a hugely important point though, because the idea with SEO is to optimise your website for all devices, not just smartphones – i.e. by making your website responsive.

Mobile SEO – Five Essential Tips

Your website needs to be optimised for mobile so that, regardless of the user’s device, everyone has a positive experience. Mobile SEO mostly relates to your website’s design, structure, and other technical aspects. Here are our five essential mobile SEO tips:

1. Focus on Speed

Google expects websites to load in half a second or less. In addition, research shows that a loading time which exceeds more than two seconds is enough to put off most consumers. Ensuring that your site loads quickly is crucial to ranking highly on both desktop and mobile search results pages. Simple speed optimisations include:

Correctly sizing your images

Removing unnecessary code

Utilising browser caching to store site resource files

Reducing the number of redirects on your site

2. Have a Responsive Design

Responsive designs are the way forward for mobile SEO and SEO in general. If you use WordPress or other content management systems, most modern themes come responsive as standard. Also, it is possible optimise existing website designs and themes by adding a few lines of code.

To get the most stable, functional, and visually attractive website, however, you should get a bespoke responsive theme.

The best responsive designs eliminate all flash elements and pop-ups plus they have a design that makes it easy to browse using a finger, reducing the possibility of accidental tapping of elements.

3. Optimise for the Local Area

This applies mostly to businesses that have a localised presence such as a physical premises or offices. If you do operate a physical location, it is important you optimise your website for local searches.

There are two ways to do this: a) include your city/town/region in your site’s content, in page titles, and in page meta descriptions, particularly the homepage; and, b) sign up for Google My Business, a free tool that lets you add important details about your business to Google such as opening hours and contact information.

4. Check for Blocked CSS, JavaScript, and Images

CSS, JavaScript, and images can enhance your website but there used to be a time when mobile devices could not properly support them. As a result, many web developers blocked them for mobile devices. Developers may also have blocked these elements because of mobile data concerns.

Today, however, these elements are crucial for helping Google determine whether you have a responsive site. Therefore, it is worth checking that your website isn’t blocking them, especially if your website has been around for some time.

5. Optimise Page Content

Remember, with mobile devices, you have much less screen space to work with. Also, the layout is different than a desktop as most people browse websites on mobile devices while holding them in a portrait position. In other words, they look at your website vertically rather than horizontally.

This means you should think about the layout of the content on your pages. Long paragraphs of text are a simple example as they could fill up all or most of a mobile screen. This is off-putting for visitors.

Many webmasters have been up in arms about Google’s mobile first index. However, mobile devices are the future and it makes sense that you optimise your website for them. Doing so will only deliver benefits, particularly over the long-term.

So, how do you know if you have a mobile optimised website? Here are some questions to ask:

Does your website load quickly on mobile when on a mobile network, i.e. not on a Wi-Fi connection?

Does your website look good on your phone and on any other phone or tablet you can check it on?

Does all the content on your website display on mobile?

Do all the features and functions of your website work on mobile?

If you are unsure about any of the above, you should get the help of an SEO agency in Auckland.

Search engine friendly website design means designing your website according to Google’s guidelines. This helps Google understand what your website is about, it ensures Google can find all the pages, and it helps improve your ranking on search results pages.

A good website developer and/or SEO agency in Auckland will look after all the elements below on your behalf. However, it is good to have an overview of the topic, so you can ensure you get a fully optimised search engine friendly website.

Here’s how you make your website search engine friendly.

Make Sure Google Can Easily Index Your Most Important Content

Website developers can add content to your pages in lots of different ways. This includes using HTML, the standard tagging system for most websites on the internet. It can also include other code such as Java or Flash as well as other types of content including images, video, and audio.

Search engines understand and use HTML more than any other type of content, however. Therefore, the most important content on your pages should be in HTML.

This means, for example, transcribing audio and video content into text. You should also use image alt tags for the images you include on your website. Image alt tags let you describe the image, so Google understands what it is.

Image alt tags look like this:

<img src=”YourImage.jpg” alt=”Description of the image”>

The Importance of Keywords

Keywords are crucial to SEO, so they are crucial to building a search engine friendly website too. Therefore, you should ensure you include the main keywords you want to target on the main pages of your website.

You should include keywords in the following locations:

Page titles

Page URLs

In H1 headers

In the first paragraph of a page, ideally the first sentence

A couple of times in the text on the page

In the image alt text of at least one image on the page

In the page’s meta description

You should also include variations of the keyword too. For example, if your keyword is “how to train your dog”, a variation of that could be “learning to train your dog”.

When structuring your website, there are two important things to avoid in relation to keywords:

Don’t keyword stuff – this means adding keywords to the page multiple times in the hope it convinces Google your page really, really, really, really, is the best. This simply doesn’t work and can actually lower your ranking in search. Keywords should appear naturally and strategically on your website pages.

Don’t cannibalise keywords – this means using a single keyword as the target keyword on multiple pages of your website. For example, having three pages on your website targeting the keyword “how to train your dog”. Doing this simply spreads the value of your content across three pages, rather than directing that value to one page.

Optimising Page Titles

Google uses page titles as a ranking factor, plus they appear in a number of important places. This includes on search results pages:

Web browsers also use page titles on tabs:

Follow these tips to optimise page titles for SEO:

Ensure your page titles are 70 characters or less. If you make them longer, Google will snip them on its search results pages.

Write readable and meaningful page titles that are useful to users. Remember, one of the objectives of page titles is to encourage users to click.

Make sure you include the main target keyword in the page title, ideally at the start.

Include your company/website name at the end of the page title.

Optimising URLs

Many websites use page titles to create the URL for the page. Therefore, following the SEO guidelines for page titles will ensure you optimise URLs too.

There is one additional point to consider, however. Research shows short URLs are more likely to rank higher than long URLs. For your most important keywords, therefore, you should look at shortening the URL.

So, for example, you could shorten this URL:

YourWebsite.com/blog/how-to-train-a-dog

To this:

YourWebsite.com/how-to-train-a-dog

Optimising Content

Optimising the content on your website will also make it more search engine friendly. Here are the main tips:

Make sure the content is well-written with no spelling or grammatical mistakes.

Write and present the content so it is easy to read. This means using short sentences, short paragraphs, bullet-point lists, sub-headings, and everyday language.

Include keywords in the content following the tips above.

Ensure the content is unique.

Make the content useful and engaging for readers.

Ensure There is a Link to Every Page You Want Google To See

Google follows all the links on your website to discover all its pages. This includes your menus, for example. There are often occasions when there are pages you want Google to index, but which Google doesn’t know about because it can’t find a link.

Here are some examples of when this situation might occur:

Pages that only display after a user completes a form. Google doesn’t complete forms when crawling your website, so will not find these pages.

Links in JavaScript, Flash, or Java.

Links blocked by your robots.txt file or Meta Robots tag. These two tools perform the same function – they let you tell Google’s crawler which pages on your website you want them to ignore. It is easy to make a mistake when doing this, however, accidentally restricting Google’s access to pages you want it to find.

Pages only accessible using a search tool. As with forms, Google’s crawler does not use search boxes on your website.

Pages that are linked by a link-stuffed page. Google’s crawler only follows a limited number of links on a page. Therefore, if the only link to a page on your website is from another page that is stuffed with links, Google might not find it.

Duplicate Versions of Content

Google does not like duplicate content, i.e. content that appears in multiple locations on the internet. This can be on different websites, but it also doesn’t like duplicate content on a single website either.

The problem is there are many legitimate reasons for having duplicate content on your website. For example, having a print-friendly version of a page.

There is a solution to this, though – the canonical tag, which you should add to all duplicate pages. The purpose of this tag is to tell Google there is a master copy of the page.

The canonical tag looks like this:

<link rel=”canonical” href=”URL”/> where URL is the website address of the master page.

Meta Description

The importance of meta descriptions to SEO is disputed. That said, Google does use meta descriptions on its search results pages:

So, even if Google doesn’t use meta descriptions as a ranking factor, they are important as they encourage users to click the link to your website.

Here’s how you can optimise meta descriptions:

Make sure they are no longer than 120 characters. Google clips meta descriptions that are longer than this.

Create unique meta descriptions for each page on your website

Ensure your meta descriptions are readable and meaningful

Include the main keyword of the page in the meta description, ideally at the start

Laying the Foundations

Creating a website that is search engine friendly is the starting point for any effective SEO strategy. Once you have the above in place, you can move onto more advanced SEO techniques, but it is important to have the right foundation in place first.

There is a huge amount of content on the internet – Google’s index contains billions of pages. Not all content is equal, however, as some can be current or dated, up-to-date or out-of-date, high-quality or low-quality, engaging or uninteresting. From an SEO perspective, there is clear evidence that high-quality content is important to your website’s rankings.

Why is this? Google has a tough job when you think about it. On every topic, niche, and keyword, hundreds if not thousands of web pages exist on the internet. How does Google determine which of those pages to display on page one of a search results page?

Relevance is important. After all, pages that are closely linked to the topic, niche, or keyword are the ones most likely to give Google’s users the information they need.

Even filtering by relevance, however, still leaves a large number of pages to rank. This is where quality becomes important. It is logical, after all. Imagine Google has two website pages on exactly the same topic. How should it order those two pages? Placing the higher quality page first is the logical answer.

High-Quality Content and SEO

Of course, there are many factors that Google looks at when ranking website pages. The quality of the content on the page is an over-arching term that covers several of those factors.

For example, we all know backlinks are important to SEO in Auckland. When content is high-quality, it is more likely to get backlinks. Keywords are important to SEO too, as is including variations of the main keyword on a page. This is much more likely to happen on a high-quality website page than one that is low-quality.

Google itself gives us good indications of the importance it places on quality. It stresses repeatedly, for example, that you should create content for users and not search engines. It also says your website should be “unique, valuable, or engaging”.

There is research to back this up too. Backlinko is one of the web’s leading authorities on SEO. It conducted research that included one million search results pages. In relation to content, it found that in-depth and long-form content generally gets higher rankings.

What Is High-Quality Content?

Your aim should be to make the content on your website pages better than your competition’s. You can even take this a stage further by striving to make the content you create the best there is on the internet.

How do you do that? Here are seven tips:

Only publish original content

Ensure the content is well-written or produced

Make the content useful to visitors

Ensure you support the content with references

Include plenty of detail

Make the content interesting and engaging

Make it long but not repetitive

Let’s go a bit deeper into each of these seven tips.

Only Publish Original Content

You probably already know duplicate content (copying content from another page or website) is a big no-no in SEO, even if you own the content. In other words, all the content on your website must be unique.

Publishing original content goes further than this, however. After all, a good writer can rewrite an article from the internet to make it unique. It is not original, however, as it will still contain the same points and ideas as the source article. It may even have the same structure.

Publishing original content involves developing and presenting your own ideas. This applies to all types of content including written content as well as images, infographics, videos, and more. A good SEO agency in Auckland will help you achieve this.

Ensure the Content is Well-Written or Produced

According to Google, you should avoid publishing content that has spelling or grammatical errors and that is “awkward or poorly written”.

Google is getting much better at identifying content that is poorly written too. There used to be a time several years ago when you would click on a search result in Google to a page that contained text on the topic you were interested in, but where all the words and sentences were jumbled so made no sense. This doesn’t happen anymore as Google can now distinguish between well-written and poorly-written text.

Make the Content Useful to Visitors

We’ve already talked above about making your website better than your competitors’ websites. Achieving this usually involves ensuring the content on your website is genuinely useful to visitors.

Google recognises this is several ways. For example, visitors are more likely to bounce from a web page they don’t find useful. Bouncing means visiting a website and leaving in a short period of time (sometimes within just a few seconds) without visiting any other pages on the site.

In addition to the SEO benefits of useful content, making the content on your website useful will increase levels of engagement and will help improve your website’s conversion rate.

Ensure You Support the Content with References

Adding outbound links improves the quality of the content on your website, particularly if the outbound links are to authoritative sources.

There are several reasons for this, including the fact that outbound links help Google understand what your page is about. Outbound links are also helpful to users as they give enhanced context and detail on the topic.

The Backlinko research mentioned above found that in-depth content on a topic often performs better in Google than lighter content. So, you should go into as much detail as possible when publishing content on your website.

Of course, you must ensure the content remains relevant and doesn’t drift or go off on tangents. The more information you give on the topic, however, the more likely it is to rank well on Google.

Make the Content Interesting and Engaging

It is possible to have content that follows all the tips above but that is boring and unengaging. Google will identify this by the reaction of users to your content. Bounce rate is something talked about above. Other indicators are shares on social media, how long the user stays on the page, whether they complete a form or make a purchase, etc.

Of course, this is another tip that not only helps with SEO, but also with improving your website overall, especially its conversion rate.

Make it Long but Not Repetitive

Another of the Backlinko findings mentioned above was that long-form content generally performs better than short posts or articles. How long should your content be, though?

This depends on the topic as it is important you don’t make the content long for the sake of being long. When you do this, your risk repeating information just to increase the word count.

On the flip side, don’t restrict the length of articles, i.e. they should be as long as they need to be to cover the topic in-depth and in as interesting a way as possible.

The Value of High-Quality Content

SEO is not just about producing high-quality content, of course. For example, a large website with an international footprint that produces high-quality content following the tips above will still probably rank better than a smaller website, even if the smaller website produces content that is better. This is because other factors like domain authority and website backlinks matter too.

That said, high-quality content is a crucial part of SEO, as well as being crucial to the success of your website overall.

Website owners across Auckland dream of their website appearing on the coveted first page of Google, where 40,000 search queries are conducted every second.

It’s likely you have the same wish.

As a result, you probably invested a significant amount in your website to make it look great. You may have even engaged the services of an SEO agency Auckland.

Despite these efforts, you may still be asking: “why isn’t my website ranking?”.

It’s frustrating when your website appears lower than your competitors on search results pages as you know you are losing potential customers. After all, websites that appear on the first page get almost all the traffic, with the greatest proportion of traffic going to those at the top.

Below you will find the top five reasons that prevent a website from ranking well in Google search. Identifying where your problems are and then resolving them will mean you can leave your frustrations behind.

Reason 1: Fierce Competition

Over 3.5 billion Google searches are made each day with website owners working hard to get to the front page of search results that are relevant to them. With so many websites using every trick available to compete for the attention of readers, it is often difficult to achieve a solid rank.

While true, the above paragraph is a broad generalisation. In fact, the level of difficulty you face ranking on Google depends on the niche you operate in. For example, it is probably far easier for a blogger writing about miniature figurines to rank well than it is for a blogger writing about rugby or movies.

This is because the more popular the subject, the more content there will be available. If you are a blogger writing on a popular subject or a local business operating with a lot of competitors, it will naturally be more difficult for you to rank highly.

If you’re going up against fierce competition, you will need to operate with a rigorous SEO Auckland strategy to find success.

Reason 2: Poor Long-Tail Keyword Strategy

The most popular and most general search terms usually return results from the largest and most well-established websites.

For example, an iPhone owner doing a search for “iPhone screen” will probably see search results from Apple’s website as well as the websites of major national and online retailers.

However, a user with a cracked iPhone screen searching for “iPhone screen repair in Mount Albert” will see results from local businesses offering iPhone screen repair. In other words, these businesses should target their SEO efforts at keywords like “iPhone screen repair in Mount Albert” rather than more general terms.

This example demonstrates how websites should focus on developing a strong long-tail keyword strategy. This means optimising for keywords with a low SEO difficulty. With this strategy, your website will see a boost in traffic that comes from searches that are more specific.

Reason 3: On-Page Optimisation

Search engines rely on crawlers to categorise and rank pages. Those crawlers look at important meta information and the structure of pages to determine what the page is about and confirm it is of an appropriate level of quality.

There are essential steps that every website owner must take when it comes to on-page optimisation.

Luckily, there is a lot of advice and guidance available. With over five million installations, Yoast SEO is the world’s most popular WordPress SEO plugin and can help website owners make sure they’re ticking all the on-page optimisation boxes, including (but not limited to):

Keywords used correctly in titles, descriptions, and URLs

Pages are the optimal length and structured efficiently

Alt tags are used properly

Sentences are the right length

Text uses an active rather than a passive voice

Thinking properly about on-page optimisation is an important step to improving your ranking and boosting your traffic.

Reason 4: Black Hat Practices

Google and other search engines use complex algorithms that constantly evolve.

SEO professionals try to keep up with these changes, regularly monitoring which techniques achieve results and which ones are outdated. You can find a register of all the announced algorithm changes on moz.com, where you can see the regularity of updates.

Working according to accepted SEO best practice, taking note of algorithm changes, and following Google’s rules, is often referred to as White Hat SEO.

In an effort to get traffic, however, some website owners (or others working on their behalf) turn to Black Hat SEO. Black Hat SEO involves using techniques that break Google’s rules to get to the top of search results pages as fast as possible.

Google and other search engines are increasingly effective at fighting back against these techniques. That said, there are still some who persist in using Black Hat techniques.

The stakes are high: domains caught using Black Hat techniques can see their ranking diminished or they can even be blacklisted entirely.

If you haven’t actively engaged in these techniques your website should be fine. If you have used them in the past, or someone else has used them on your website, this could be another reason it is not ranking.

Reason 5: Poor Technical Optimisation

The content found on your website isn’t the only ranking factor as the structure and technical performance of your website is becoming more important.

In November 2016, mobile traffic officially overtook desktop traffic for the first time. It is still becoming more and more common for audiences to turn to mobile devices, and those users expect a speedy and smooth experience, regardless of the device they choose.

In response to this, Google announced in January 2018 that the loading speed of mobile websites would factor into the ordering of search results. Mobile-first indexing has arrived too, which means Google uses the mobile version of websites to index and rank pages.

Therefore, ensuring your website loads fast on mobile has never been more important. So, poor technical optimisation could be the reason your website is not ranking.

In fact, you can use Google’s Test My Site tool to get an idea of how your website performs on mobile.

This tool reveals how many seconds your website takes to load and how this impacts the percentage of visitors you stand to lose.

Bring It All Together

Any of these factors could be the reason your website is not ranking, if not a combination of multiple ones.

Conducting an accurate and thorough audit of your website according to the points above should help when it comes to ensuring your website ranks as highly as possible on Google.

How important are product descriptions? After all, some products appear to sell just fine even though the description is poor. This doesn’t mean product description writing are not important, though.

Here are some reasons why you should optimise your product descriptions:

Helps the customer understand what the product does

Explains the benefits of the product to the customer

Helps the customer imagine using, wearing, or consuming the product

Helps with SEO as a product description gives Google more content to analyse

Top Tips for Good Product Descriptions Writing

Make each product description unique – this can be a challenge if you have a lot of products. It is important to make them unique, however, both to help potential customers when they are viewing your website and for Google. Remember, even though some of your products may be very similar, using the same description on each one could be classed as duplicate content on Google. Duplicate content is one of the things Google does not like.

Don’t get fixated on word count or length – there is no fixed length that your product description should be. In fact, there is no recommended length either as it simply depends on the product. This is because some products will require long descriptions, particularly if you have to describe what the product does. Others, however, will only need a brief sentence or two. An example is a pair of jeans, i.e. there is no need to describe what a pair of jeans does.

Explain the product as clearly and concisely as possible – this means avoiding repetitive sentences and statements. It also means sticking to the point

Explain the benefits – most buying decisions are made on the basis of benefits. Therefore, your product descriptions should not simply be a list of the technical specifications of the product. Instead, you should explain how the customer will benefit from owning the product.

Include all information on the product – the last thing you want is for a customer to go to another website to find something out about the product because you didn’t give them that information on your website. If a customer does that, they might never come back to you to complete the purchase. Therefore, if the information is relevant to the customer, you should include it.

Write for your customers – this might sound like an obvious thing to do, but many product descriptions on the internet are not aimed at customers. Instead, they give the seller’s perception of the product with very little regard to what the customer thinks. To write good product descriptions for your customers, you must first understand who your main customers are. You should then tailor each product description to that audience.

Make the description easy to read – this includes writing in a way that is informal and conversational. In addition, you should structure the text in a way that is easy to read. For example, you might think some customers will want to read a detailed description of the product and/or its technical specifications. Don’t push this content on customers who are not interested, however. A way of avoiding this is to put the additional content behind a link or tab, only leaving a brief description in the main section.

Use bullet points – following on from the last point, lists of benefits or key features will improve your product descriptions.

Think about SEO – where it makes sense, include keywords in your product descriptions to help improve the page’s ranking in Google.

Always use images – in product descriptions, images are almost always more important than the text that accompanies them. A good approach for adding images to products is to follow Amazon’s guidelines for sellers. After all, when it comes to selling online, Amazon knows what it is doing.

In general, product descriptions should be quick to read, they should keep the viewer on the page (rather than going elsewhere to get additional information), and they should encourage the viewer to make a purchase. The above tips will help you achieve this so you can sell more.

Our website should be an extension of the sales and marketing efforts of your business. In other words, if your website is not helping you attract and retain customers, there is something wrong. The best way to make your website effective at generating sales is to have clearly defined objectives on each page.

An objective is an action you want the visitor to take as a result of visiting the page or your website in general. Examples include:

Call your business

Visit your business

Send a query

Become a lead

Download something

Make a purchase

Register with your website

Sign up to your email list

All the examples above either generate an immediate sale or give you the opportunity of making the sale at a later date.

You Can Have More than One Objective Per Page

You don’t need to pick just one of the above for the pages on your website. In fact, it is better to offer multiple options relevant to the particular page, as well as multiple options per page.

For example, a visitor might research the products or services you offer but are not ready to buy immediately. In this situation, you might encourage them to sign up to your email list. In other words, this page will have two objectives depending on the visitor’s intentions.

The Importance of Defining a Page’s Objectives

Your website developer will be responsible for implementing the objectives on the pages, i.e. the developer will add the forms, call-to-action elements, shopping carts, maps, and more that will deliver on the page’s objective.

In addition, a good website developer will help create the right user flow, so the visitor gets presented with objective one and then objective two if objective one is not immediately applicable.

Defining the page’s objectives, however, is crucial to this process. Here are some examples using the objectives in the list above:

Call your business – include your phone number in a highly visible location on every page as well as including it as a call-to-action with the text on each page.

Visit your business – ensure there is a prominent and easy to use map on the contact page of your website and possibly also the home page.

Send a query – include a form that enables visitors to send a query. You should also ensure the form is in a highly visible location on each page.

Become a lead – include a positive and persuasive message as well as a prominent form encouraging the visitor to send you their details for your sales team to get back to them.

Download something – you have multiple options with this objective depending on the download. They include offering the download within the page, in a timed popup, or in a popup that appears when the visitor goes to leave your website.

Make a purchase – include large and highly visible Add to Cart buttons and ensure the checkout process is as easy and secure as possible.

Register with your website – make the registration option visible on all pages, give a compelling reason for registration, and make the registration process easy to complete.

Sign up to your email list – strategies for this objective include adding welcome mats, in-content calls-to-action, popups, and more.

Whatever industry you are in, and whatever type of website you have, every page should have a clear objective. By doing this, you are more likely to make it clear to the visitor what you want them to do next. This will improve the results you get from your website.

If you sell products directly on your website, you will have a shopping cart abandonment rate. Unfortunately, shopping cart abandonment is a fact of e-commerce websites. This doesn’t mean you have to accept your current level of abandonment.

In fact, there is quite a lot you can do to reduce shopping cart abandonment rates. They are all cost-effective, and they will all help you increase sales.

What is Shopping Cart Abandonment?

Shopping cart abandonment is when a visitor to your website adds items to a shopping cart but then does not fully complete the purchase. They could abandon the purchase immediately after they put the items in the cart or they could abandon it at any stage up to the point of giving final confirmation.

There are many reasons for visitors abandoning shopping carts. They include not feeling the website is secure, being surprised by an additional price, or becoming frustrated with a complicated checkout process.

How to Reduce Shopping Cart Abandonment Rates

Add SSL encryption to your website. More and more people are now familiar with what this shopping cart abandonment rate, plus their website browser often tells them whether or not the website they are visiting is secure.

Make the checkout process on your website as simple as possible. One of the best ways to do this is to go through the process yourself using both a computer and a mobile device. You should also get someone you trust from outside your business to go through the process and give you honest feedback.

Ensure the pages on your website load fast. Even though the visitor is in the checkout process and is in the frame of mind to make a purchase, they will quickly go somewhere else if your pages take too long to load.

Include delivery and other added costs upfront. This is one of the most important tips as forcing customers to get into the checkout process before you give them a delivery price results in a bad user experience. It also increases your shopping cart abandonment rate.

Offer guarantees, such as money back guarantees, to make the purchase feel less risky to the customer.

Don’t force people making a purchase on your website to register an account. You might like them to register an account for various reasons, but this additional layer in the checkout process often leads to a higher shopping cart abandonment rate. Therefore, give visitors the option of checking out as a guest.

Add a call to action to your shopping cart to remind and encourage visitors to complete the checkout process.

Add multiple ways to pay to stop visitors from abandoning the shopping cart because they can’t pay using the method you require.

Adding a progress indicator is a simple but effective method of showing the visitor how much more they have to do to complete the checkout process. This clarity will keep them engaged for longer.

Analyse how visitors progress through your checkout process, paying particular attention to stages where they drop out. You can get this information from Google Analytics and it can help you identify areas for improvement.

This final tip accepts the fact that even when you do all the above, you will still have visitors who abandon their shopping carts. These may not be completely lost, however, if you use remarketing advertising campaigns to win them back.

Do you want your website to generate more sales for your business? Are you in the process of getting your website redesigned and want to make it the best it can possibly be? At Kiwi Website Design, we have extensive experience building websites that increase websites sales.

Here are our seven design tips you should ensure are included on your site.

1. The Value Proposition

There is very little a website design can deliver if the value proposition you offer to customers is not compelling enough for them to make a purchase. Therefore, the first step to increasing sales on your website is to decide what the value proposition is. The next step is to properly communicate it to your website’s visitors.

The value proposition specifics will depend on your business. You can base it on price, quality of service, quality of product, innovativeness of product, or something else.

Whatever it is, the important thing is the website visitor understands it and is attracted to it.

2. Include Compelling CTAs

A CTA is a call-to-action. It is one of the most important elements you will have on the pages of your website.

The first step is to make sure your website has CTAs, as not all do. The next step is to look at the position, design, and wording of the CTA. Here are some questions you should ask:

Would a change of colour make the CTA button standout on the page more?

Could the text be more interesting or positive?

Is the CTA in a prominent enough position?

3. Add Videos to Your Website

Videos on websites increase sales. In fact, for some businesses, videos can increase sales by over 140 percent. You should, therefore, consider adding videos to your website.

This could be product videos demonstrating the benefits of the product or showing it being used. If your business offers services, you can use videos to explain the service and how it is different from your competitors.

4. Make Sure the Design Appeals to the Audience

This tip is about matching the style, colour, and tone of the website to your target audience. For example, bright and flashy colours with relaxed text will probably not work very well on a website for a company offering professional services to other businesses.

This one can be difficult as many business owners select colours and make design decisions based on their own preferences and likes. This is understandable as you must live with the website and you should be proud of it. That said, never lose sight of your customers and what they like.

5. Ensure Your Website is Easy to Use

The navigation and structure of your website should be simple and intuitive. Therefore, don’t place unnecessary restrictions on visitors in relation to navigation and avoid situations where the visitor lands on a dead-end page.

Instead, try to create a logical flow for the user.

6. You Need a Secure and Simple Checkout

If visitors can buy directly from your website, your shopping cart and checkout are crucial elements. Get them wrong, and you will lose sales.

To get the checkout process right, make it as easy to complete and use as possible. In addition, ensure it is secure using SSL encryption.

7. Add Trust Elements

Trust elements include testimonials and case studies that show the user you are capable of delivering on your promises. They also include badges and logos to show you have the necessary qualifications and/or skills. You can also use badges to show how you have made the website and checkout process secure.

Implementing the above tips will require resources and, usually, help from a professional website developer. The increase in sales you will get as a result, however, will make it worth the effort.

You probably won’t be surprised to hear there is no simple answer to the question how much does website design cost. It’s a bit like asking how much does a car cost. After all, you could probably get a car for a couple of hundred dollars if you wanted to. It will get you from A to B but it won’t look very good and it will probably break down a lot. Equally, you could buy a car that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, but for most people that is complete overkill.

The same applies when considering website design costs, i.e. it depends on what you want and how you get your website designed. At the bottom end of the scale, you can get a website that will cost you almost nothing if you build it yourself. If you want a professionally designed website, however, you can expect the cost to be in the thousands of dollars’ range.

As most SMEs in New Zealand will need a professionally designed website, this article focuses on professional, custom website design costs.

Website Design Auckland: Cost

The average cost of website design in Auckland is $1,000 – $10,000+ for a custom website built by a professional website design company.

The things that will affect the cost include the functionality you need and the services you want from the website designer. The website designer’s skills and experience also impact the price you pay.

As with most things in life, not all designers work to the same standards, with high-quality workmanship demanding a premium.

What Your Money Gets You

There are five main elements of website design, all of which influence the cost. This is what you can expect from your website design agency for its fee:

Server setup – the configuration of your website’s server, implementing a CDN, installing an SSL certificate, setting up email on the domain, installing a CMS, and more.

Website design including UX – this part of the process involves designing the layout of the website. This usually means customising an existing template or creating a fully customised option. UX is important too. This involves looking at the navigation, user flow, and ease of use to ensure the user experience is as good as possible.

Adding functionality and custom code – this is where your website designer works on the website’s engine adding the functionality you need. This can be anything from web forms to shopping carts and checkouts to integrations with your existing systems.

Content creation – your website needs text and images. Your website designer will coordinate this part of the process and may also provide copywriting and graphic design services.

Ongoing maintenance – a website is never fully finished as it requires ongoing maintenance and updating. This will be included in the price you pay for the website for a fixed period of time. You will need a maintenance contract once this time expires.

The Cost of Your Website

As mentioned above, you can get a website online for next to nothing if you want to. Why, then, should you invest several thousand dollars in a website design? Firstly, nothing is really free. There are costs involved even if you build the website yourself, plus you will need to spend time learning how to do it – as your time is money, there is a cost associated with this too.

The main reason for getting a professionally designed website at the above design costs, however, is results. Your website will look better and it will function better when it is professionally designed. This will help ensure your website achieves its objectives.

If you just build a website and do nothing in relation to SEO, it is unlikely many people will visit it. Here are 10 essential SEO tips that will increase your visibility in Google. This, in turn, will bring more traffic to your site.

1. Move your website to WordPress

There are lots of tools and platforms you can use to build a website. For most, however, the best option is WordPress. It is the most popular platform, it has powerful functionality, and it’s easy to use. Plus, it has great SEO plugins you can install – more of that later.

2. Optimise for mobile

When going through the process of getting a website designed, most people think about the desktop version first. This is not the way Google looks at your site, though. In addition, a significant proportion of your visitors will use mobile devices to browse and use your site. You should, therefore, concentrate on optimising for mobile first both in terms of appearance and functionality.

3. Fix errors

Google hates errors on websites so you should find them and fix them. One of the best tools you can use to do this is Google Webmaster Tools. It shows you what Google sees when it looks at your site, including the errors.

4. Do an SEO audit

The next stage is to run your website through an SEO audit service. There are many services available for this including Neil Patel’s SEO analyser and SEMrush, plus you can do a search on Google for alternatives. Most offer a free initial analysis that will give you enough information to work on. This includes information on your site’s keywords, backlinks, page load speed, and more.

5. Optimise your content

This step includes:

Installing Yoast on your website. It is an SEO plugin with features like checking the keyword density on a page, showing you how the page looks in Google, analysing the quality of writing on the page, and more. There is a premium version, but the free version has enough features to get you started.

Ensure the writing on your website is high-quality and error free. It is usually a good idea to use a professional proof reader, copywriter, or editor to do this for you.

Ensure the visuals on your website are fantastic. This includes adding infographics and making images personal to your business rather than using stock images.

6. Create and submit a sitemap

The Yoast WordPress plugin will create this. You should then submit it to Google Webmaster Tools and to Bing. The sitemap helps search engines understand the content on your website.

7. Start blogging

A blog will bring more traffic to your website, plus it helps with SEO. For example, a blog will bring more long-tail search traffic to your site. It also helps with the following tips.

8. Submit content to RSS feeds

Google doesn’t take RSS feed submission into account but this tip can still help with SEO. By submitting your content to RSS feeds, more people will see it which will generate traffic as well as backlinks and follows on social media. Google does take these things into account.

9. Get Backlinks by guest blogging

Guest blogging on popular websites in your industry will bring additional traffic to your website. It also helps to increase your profile and reputation. Plus, guest blogging will generate additional backlinks to help with SEO.

10. Add a related posts section

Google looks at a number of factors in relation to your website. Generally speaking, it regards it as good when people who visit your website look at more than one page. Plus, the more time they spend on your site the better. Adding a related posts section helps keep people on your website for longer.

There is quite a bit in the above 10 tips and you might need help implementing them. They are all, however, important for SEO.

Google is working on what it calls the Google mobile first index. As with any significant change in Google’s search algorithm, it could impact your business by affecting the rank of your website in search results. To help you prepare, here’s what you need to know.

Before the Smartphone Age

To understand what is happening you need an overview of how Google works. It scans all the websites and pages it can find on the internet and puts those pages into its index. Its search algorithm then matches a user’s search to web pages in the index. This is how Google produces its search results pages.

Google used to only look at the desktop version of a website. This was back before smartphones when everyone used Google’s search tool with a computer or laptop. Over recent years, however, more and more people started to use their phones when searching for something in Google. In fact, we have now gone past the tipping point – more people search on Google using a mobile device than a computer.

Currently, Google’s main index contains the desktop version of websites. In other words, it looks at the structure, content, links, and other criteria of the desktop version and uses that to determine search rankings.

The mobile-first index will change this focus from desktop to mobile to reflect the majority of its users. This means Google will crawl and index the mobile version of your site and will use that index to determine your position in search, even when the user searches with a desktop computer.

In other words, Google is working on switching its primary index of the world’s web pages to contain mobile versions of those pages instead of desktop versions.

What Will Be the Impact of the Mobile-First Index and What Should You Do?

There is a strong possibility that your search rankings could be damaged when the mobile-first index is introduced if the mobile version of your website is not fully optimised. Here are some things you need to consider:

Responsive design – Google has recommended you use responsive design for many years. These are websites that dynamically adjust to fit the user’s screen. It means you can have one website, with that site automatically changing in size as required. This is the minimum you need to ensure you are not impacted by the mobile-first index.

Optimised for mobile – often, a technically responsive design is not enough. This is because there is a wide range of screen sizes that users can have. Optimising your website means carefully structuring the content for each grouping of sizes, focusing heavily on usability and not just appearance.

Content – the beauty of responsive sites is you have content on one website which displays regardless of the screen size. There are some responsive website designs where the content displayed changes as the screen gets smaller, i.e. websites that show less content to mobile users than desktop users. If this applies to your website, you will need to take action.

Optimise the content – you should also look at the structure of the content on your pages as this should be optimised for mobile too. This means having a clean and uncluttered design with text that is super easy to read. You may also need to adjust your images so they look better on mobile devices. After all, your laptop or desktop computer’s screen has a landscape orientation while your phone is typically used in a portrait orientation. Images on your phone will, therefore, look different than on your computer.

Speed – speed has always been important to Google. Focus on making sure the mobile version of your site loads as fast as possible.

Interstitials – these are popups that you might have on the mobile version of your website asking visitors to sign up to your newsletter or offering them a discount. If you have interstitials, you might need to review your strategy as Google doesn’t like them.

The best advice is to take steps now to ensure your website is ready for the mobile-first index.

Successfully Launching a Website Without a Brand or Money to Promote It

So, you’ve got a great idea for a website or business, but have no money to promote it. You can make it a success, so long as you adopt the right strategy. Here’s how to successfully launch a website without a brand or money to promote it.

What You Shouldn’t Worry About

There are two things you shouldn’t worry about and the first is SEO. Of course, you should make your website SEO friendly and you should follow good SEO practice, but SEO should not be a priority in your marketing strategy. The reality is you simply won’t be able to beat the main websites in Google searches for your products or services. In fact, you probably wouldn’t be able to beat them even if you had a big budget. So, do the basics, but at the start don’t worry about SEO.

Secondly, don’t worry about advertising either. Sure, if you’ve got the money to allocate to a campaign and the time to learn how to make it work, advertising is a great way to generate new leads and sales for your business. If you don’t have money or time to allocate, forget about advertising.

How to Launch a Website with No Money or Brand

Right, let’s get onto what you should do. There are three broad strategies you should adopt:

Get referrals

Become an industry expert

Meet real people

Let’s look at each in more detail.

Get Referrals

Getting referrals is a tactic that businesses have used for decades – long before the introduction of the internet. In fact, most successful salespeople have a referral strategy. With a bit of thought, you can implement a referral strategy for your website that won’t cost you anything.

Here are two techniques you can use to achieve this:

List your products on marketplaces or listing websites – this normally only applies if you sell products rather than services, but it’s an excellent way to get instant visibility when you’re unknown. The most well-known marketplace is Amazon and eBay is one of the most popular listing sites. The downsides include the marketplace taking a cut from your sales and the fact the transaction takes place on its website, not yours. That said, you’ll get sales you might not otherwise get plus you’ll increase the exposure of your brand, including in Google.

Offer an incentive – this can take many forms, but it usually involves offering existing customers an incentive to refer your brand to their friends and family. This incentive could, for example, be in the form of a discount.

Become an Industry Expert

The next zero-cost strategy you can use is to enhance your reputation as an expert in your industry. You can do this by having an active presence on social media, participating in discussion groups, and offering help on questions and answers websites. These will all help, but the best approach is through guest blogging.

The process involves finding relevant blogs and industry websites that publish guest posts. You then need to reach out to them to become a contributor, usually offering an idea for a post. Once published, you’ll get referral traffic to your website plus you’ll raise your profile online.

Meet Real People

The final step involves getting away from the computer as you can get more traffic to your website and grow it faster by meeting more people. This includes attending industry events, local business events, networking events, and more. The connections you make today can turn into sales in the future.

Making a new website successful involves thinking outside the box and using strategies that have a track record of success. The above will get you off to a good start.

It doesn’t matter how good your website looks or how much traffic it attracts if you don’t get any leads. The fact is, leads won’t come in on their own. You need to take steps and include features on your website that encourage people to give you their information.

Once you start successfully collecting leads you can begin optimising to ensure you get as many as possible. You can also work on your conversion rate to turn more of those leads into sales and profits. It all starts with getting leads, though.

The Lead Magnet

If you don’t give your visitors a compelling reason to give you their contact information, they won’t. One of the best methods of getting leads on a website is by using lead magnets.

Lead magnets are something that you offer the visitor in exchange for their contact information, which is usually their email address. Examples of lead magnets include:

eBook

Report

Resource, such as “100 best…” or “50 tips to…”

Free trial if your product or service is suitable

Video such as a video tutorial

Discount

Free analysis or assessment such as “free analysis of your business Facebook page…”

To make lead magnets work, they must be targeted at your customers and they must be genuinely valuable. In other words, they must be worth the exchange of contact information.

Lead magnets are beneficial for several reasons:

They generate leads

The leads they generate are from people at all stages in the buying cycle

They help to build your reputation as an expert in your industry

They allow you to start a conversation with the potential customer

Essential Website Elements for Getting Leads

There are lots of things your website should have that will help you get more leads. The two most important are:

Well placed buttons – you should have “Free Quote” or “Free Consultation” buttons in prominent positions on each page of your website. In addition, the button should be big and should have a design that gets attention.

Exit overlay – an exit overlay displays a popover when the user’s browser detects they are about to leave your website. It gives you one last chance to offer the visitor something in return for their contact information. This can be your main lead magnet or something additional that will get their attention.

Additional Tips to Get Leads from Your Website

The above tips are the most important elements to increase the number of leads you get from your website, but there are other steps you can take. This includes:

Live chat – adding a live chat feature to your website lets visitors quickly and easily ask you questions or find information. It is unobtrusive and the user is in control, so it doesn’t put visitors off, plus it’s effective at getting leads.

Social proof – adding testimonials to your website increases confidence and trust levels. This will encourage visitors to give you their contact details as it shows you have a proven track record.

Add trust signals – other trust signals you can add include details of awards you’ve won or certifications you have.

Call to action – it is also important to include calls to action on your website. If you don’t ask your users to give you their contact details or request a quote, they won’t.

Blog – blogging improves your reputation and level of authority which can also generate leads.

The final tip is to work with a website developer that understands lead generation, keeping in mind that not all do. At Kiwi Website Design, we specialise in lead generating websites and have a long track record of success. To find out more, contact us today.

Running a Google AdWords campaign can be a frustrating process. After all, you can see loads of ads when you do a search for your targeted keywords, so somebody must be making money. Also, if you read about digital marketing you will know that many businesses achieve significant returns on investment from AdWords. Why, then, are your campaigns not making you money?

In the list below you will find some of the main causes of AdWords failure. The most important thing to remember, however, is that AdWords is not as simple as it looks.

AdWords Knowledge is Power

Of course, it is correct to say that almost anyone can set up an AdWords campaign, and you can complete the process quickly. The process, however, is misleading.

The real key to success is not completing the form on the AdWords’ interface to launch your campaign. Instead, real AdWords success comes from digging much deeper into the process and understanding how Google works. When you do this, you can get better positions for your ads, higher click through rates, and improved conversions. You can also lower your costs.

That sounds great, doesn’t it? It often means getting help from a company with a proven track record of AdWords success. Working with an AdWords professional is also often the fastest way to improve ROI.

Eight Common Reasons Why AdWords Campaigns Fail

Failing to optimize – many people, including some who provide AdWords management services, operate a “set and forget” approach to AdWords campaigns. In other words, they don’t regularly check the performance of keywords, bids, audiences, and more to make improvements. Optimization is absolutely essential to the success of an AdWords campaign, however.

Using too many broad keywords – broad keywords often result in irrelevant clicks. This brings traffic to your website but it is not traffic that will ever convert. That is bad enough on its own but those irrelevant clicks can also damage the performance of your overall campaign. This is because while the user that clicks is irrelevant to you, your website can also be irrelevant to them. That means they have a bad user experience which Google does not like. Reducing the number of broad keywords or making the keywords phrase match or exact match are the solutions.

Not using negative keywords – another method of reducing the number of irrelevant clicks you get on your ads is to use negative keywords. Negative keywords are an option when setting up an AdWords campaign, though, so many people don’t use them. If you don’t, this could be one of the reasons your ads don’t make money.

Not focusing on click through rate (CTR) – all AdWords metrics are important, but CTR is one of the most crucial to a successful campaign. Of course, a higher CTR means more traffic to your website but it is also important for the position of your ads. Remember, Google is a business so it wants users to click on its ads to make it money. Therefore, it puts the ads it thinks will get the most clicks in the best positions on search results pages. If you have a good CTR rate, you will increase the chances that this will be you.

Not including unique selling points in ad text – the text you use in your ads must give users a reason to click on them rather than one of the other ads they can see. This means you need a unique selling point. This could be discount or price related, but it can also be about quality of service, more customer benefits, or another reason that makes your ad stand out and makes the user want to find out more.

Not using keywords in the ad text – keywords help you target the right audience to get relevant traffic, but they can also help users understand what your ad is about and how you can potentially help them. You should, therefore, include keywords in your ad text.

Not split testing – one of the most important split tests to perform in AdWords campaigns is the ads themselves. You should have multiple versions running to see which performs better. This should be a constant process too, as just because one ad performs better than another doesn’t mean you can’t come up with something that performs even better again. You should always tweak, change, and try new ideas, testing different variations of your ads against others.

You have a website that doesn’t convert – getting a click on your ads is only part of the process of making money from an AdWords campaign. This is because you must also convert that click into a customer. This means having a website that converts. If yours doesn’t, you will have to make changes which typically means getting help from a reputable website design company.

While these are the most common, there are other reasons why AdWords campaigns fail. This demonstrates how complex the process can be. It is possible to find success, however, by getting the help you need and/or taking steps to optimize and improve your campaigns.

Getting traffic is only one part of making your website successful, and it is not even the most important. Maximising your conversion rate is where you should focus most of your efforts. Here are 12 ways you can boost your website conversion rate.

1. Create Urgency

Your objective is to get visitors to your website to convert now. If they leave to think about it, they won’t come back. Creating urgency is a great way to encourage visitors to take immediate action. There are several ways of doing this including mentioning stock numbers or making the offer time limited. You can even add a countdown timer to your pages to make the urgency more real.

2. Optimise Forms

The forms on your website should be quick and easy to complete. This particularly applies to email opt-in forms – the more fields you ask visitors to complete, the less likely they will be to give you their email address.

3. Optimise the Checkout Process

Make sure your checkout process is intuitive and fast to prevent customers from starting it but not finishing it. It also helps to make your checkout look secure.

4. Add an Exit Popup

Exit popups are an excellent way of making a final pitch to your visitors before they leave your website. Depending on the conversion you want to achieve, they can significantly increase your conversion rate. The offer you make should be compelling plus you should follow the above points – make it time limited and optimise any forms you use.

5. Take Away Risk

Another effective way of increasing conversion rates is to remove doubt or worry from the minds of your visitors. You can do this by offering a guarantee – a 100 percent money back guarantee will be the most effective. Another tactic is to offer a free trial.

6. Add Testimonials

Nobody wants to be the first to try something so it is important you show customers your experience and standards of service through testimonials. Testimonials should be relatable to the customer and should not only be genuine but should also look genuine too.

7. Focus Above the Fold

The area of your website above the fold is the part of the screen that you can see without scrolling. This is where you should put your conversion elements including offers, buttons, and forms.

8. Keep Designs Simple and Distraction-Free

Simple designs often get the most conversions. There are a number of reasons for this including the fact that flashy designs do not help visitors make a buying decision. You should also remove all unnecessary distractions.

9. Personalise

Your conversion rate will improve the more personal you can make your content. You can do this through the copy on your website, plus you can use tools that geotarget your visitors. Geotargeting involves dynamically showing personalised content to your visitors based on their location. You should also personalise your emails as much as possible, particularly including the recipient’s name.

10. Use Dedicated Landing Pages

If you run PPC campaigns, you should use dedicated landing pages.

11. Remarketing

Remarketing helps you win back the people who visit your website but don’t convert. Assuming they plan to make a purchase from someone, remarketing helps increase the chances that it will be you.

12. Test and Measure

You firstly need to measure your website’s conversion rate then you should test all the strategies you use to see what works so you can make refinements.

Google News generates billions of clicks to publisher websites every month. Just think: what if you could get just a few thousand of those clicks to your website?

It would be great, wouldn’t it, but what if you are not a publisher or a news organisation? The truth is this in itself does not exclude you from inclusion in Google News. Whatever type of website you have, you can get into this high-potential Google platform if you follow the right steps and think the right way.

It takes daily effort, but if you believe Google News traffic is potentially beneficial to your business, you can do it. Here’s how.

You Must Publish News

There are several things you should consider when planning how to get your website included in Google News. In fact, Google itself publishes a long article on how to maximise your chances. At the top of the list, however, is you must publish news.

What does that mean, though? Here are some general guidelines:

Cover recent events – news organisations publish stories covering recent events. Generally, this excludes opinion articles, advice articles (like this one), or information articles (like reporting on the weather). In addition, while evergreen content is great for general SEO, it won’t work on Google News.

Publish original stories – copying content published by others will not work on Google News. This doesn’t mean you can’t write a story about a topic covered elsewhere. Instead, you must find your own angle, add new information, or move the story along in some way.

Write objectively – good news reporting is balanced so you should keep your articles as objective as possible.

Write the story well – this includes straightforward standards like getting the spelling and grammar correct. You should also structure your article like a news article. This means giving the main details of the story in the first paragraph and generally structuring the article throughout by giving the most important information first. As you might expect, there are lots of other standards you should learn to help you write good news articles including using an active voice and writing in the present tense. A good starting point to learn these standards is the Associated Press style guide.

Publish regularly – news organisations publish stories regularly so you should too. This means aiming for at least two per day.

Other Factors to Consider

If you feel you can meet the above requirements, here are some other things you should consider before applying for inclusion in Google News. They will increase your chances of approval and also help to maximise your traffic once your links start appearing.

Be honest and transparent with your readers – firstly, don’t mislead your readers about who is behind your website. You should also publish online and offline contact details, i.e. email addresses as well as a physical address and phone number.

Build credibility as an author – publish on websites other than your own to build up your author profile.

Follow the technical guidelines – this includes making sure the URLs of your stories are unique and permanent. Your articles must also be in HTML, i.e. Google News doesn’t index PDF documents or JavaScript content.

Write good headlines – include keywords and make sure the headline is informative to readers.

Make your website mobile responsive – this will help improve the visibility of your stories in Google News searches on mobile devices.

Link building has become one of the most important practices for better SEO performance. Backlinks are like votes of popularity for your website to search engines. The higher the quality of the links and the more of them you have, the greater ranking potential your web pages will have.

Backlink quality is measured from the source the link comes from. One of the important factors is that your backlink is inserted with proper content. Otherwise, it will look like spam.

For example, a backlink to a tech blog would have great value if the link is inserted in an article that gives tech information. That would be a credible backlink with good contextual relevancy.

The other variable that determines the quality of a backlink is the authority of the link’s source. Google puts a measure of authority on all websites, ranging from 0-10. It is called PageRank, or PR for short. So, a website with a PR7 (high authority) offers greater link value – or link juice – than a PR1 (low authority) website.

Blogging: Create and maintain a blog that is a separate domain from your money site (the web site receiving the links). Build the blog around a niche topic that relates to your money site and frequently publish content with backlinks integrated into the blog post’s copy.

Guest blogging: Guest blogging is one of the most effective ways to build backlinks on higher authority blogs. This takes some effort as you must find good blogs, contact the blog owners, and inquire about writing a blog post for their blog.

RSS feed: Have an RSS feed on your blog. Doing this is free and easy to set up. An RSS feed is advantageous as it allows people to syndicate your content to generate greater interest and increase the popularity of your blog. This can then result in others providing attribution links back to your pages.

Press releases: Write and distribute press releases regularly. The key here is to publish your press releases through distribution sites that allow you to add backlinks in the copy, as well as other sites that offer great coverage and authority.

Create case studies: Writing a case study about a client who has succeeded through your services will not only display credibility in your company but also generate interest from the client. Quality clients will often link back to your website out of respect for your solid PR stunt.

Link to other relevant blogs: Often, linking to other related blogs can generate link reciprocity. In other words, some blog owners are likely to return the favour. In some cases, you may want to make it known that you are linking to their blog as not all blog owners check their backlinks.

Create visual content: Consider diversifying from text to visual content such as images, infographics, charts, and cartoons. Not only will these techniques attract readers, but they will also earn and retain backlinks.

Social sharing widgets: Social sharing widgets on your web pages and blog posts – like Twitter’s “tweet this” or Facebook’s “like this” – can go a long way to propagating your content and generating link popularity.

Write reviews: When you give a positive review of a company or a piece of content (like a book), chances are the author or website owner will link back to your website.

Offer free tools: If you have skills in a particular service or niche, create and offer free tools and resources. This is one of the best ways to attract new business and quality backlinks.

We hope these ten link building techniques will get you on your way to generating quality links to start raising your rankings in search engines. If you find it difficult to do this, you may need to hire a backlink building service.

On-site SEO involves optimising web pages to rank higher and gain more traffic in search engines. On-site SEO includes optimising the content and HTML source code of a webpage. Off-site SEO, on the other hand, involves optimising external links.

So, do you want your website SEO optimised to get more traffic from search engines?

If your answer is yes to the above question, you should consider optimising your website.

There are two factors to consider when it comes to optimising a website:

On-Site optimisation

Off-Site optimisation

Today I will focus only on the on-site element and will share basic information that impacts website optimisation.

The Domain Name
The domain name is an important part of on-site SEO. However, with Google’s EMD update, having an exact match domain name no longer matters a lot in SEO. Nonetheless, the domain name adds credibility and relevancy to your blog. It can help users decide if the blog is the right one to get the information they are searching for or not.

The Meta Description
Another important component of on-site SEO is the meta description. This is a short overview of what the blog is all about. The statement that you input here will be used by search engines to describe your blog. This will also be the short statement that will appear in search results pages.

The meta description can heavily influence the search user’s decision on whether to check out your site or not. This is also used by the search engine crawlers when ranking websites for certain keywords. Therefore, make sure that your target keyword term is present in the meta description.

Web Content
Web content is a key area that greatly matters in on-site optimisation. Quality and uniqueness of the post must be given due focus so each post must be unique. Ideally, it should not be published elsewhere so it is distinct to your site. Aside from that, it should contain highly valuable information and an eye-popping title that effectively grabs attention.

Internal Links
Another factor in on-site SEO is internal links as they must be properly placed. Each page should, ideally, have a link from another page or from the homepage. The internal link structure should also be flawless to ensure visitors can quickly and conveniently find the right pages relevant to their search.

Metatags
Metatags are HTML elements that provide information about a web page for search engines and website visitors. These elements must be placed as tags in thesection of an HTML document.

Anchor Text
The anchor text is the visible, clickable text in a hyperlink. The words contained in the anchor text can determine the ranking that the individual page will receive by search engines.

Rick Media Files
Another important component of on-site SEO is rich media files. These are the relevant photos and videos included your web pages. These files further add value to your posts, while the relevancy of the photos and videos can reinforce the search engine’s assessment of the webpage. These files should be properly inserted with alt-tags that are relevant to the main target keyword phrase.

Loading Speed and Bounce Rate

Loading speed and bounce rate have little SEO value but they can add up to give you better page ranking due to enhanced user experience. The loading speed of the webpage can affect bounce rate and it can also cause some visitors to leave if the page loads too slowly.

Everyone wants their website to have a better Google search ranking to increase website traffic and enhance visibility. The Google search engine uses various algorithms to rank pages in its search results. Its algorithm is a secret so is not shared by Google, although there are many basic ways to improve your rank in search results. This involves using techniques known as Search Engine Optimisation, or SEO.

SEO takes time and there is no quick solution. If someone tells they will get you fast results then it’s probably a scam. The most important thing you need to make sure is that you have a website that people want to visit. Also, never use black hat techniques that can, at a later stage, be detected by Google as you will end up getting blacklisted.

The following tips can help you increase your website visibility and search ranking:

Tip 1: Keyword Phrases

When someone is on a search engine to find your website, they will write a relevant word or phrase – this is called a keyword phrase. Your keyword phrases should appear in your content, ideally in the first paragraph. You should also use words in your articles that people are most likely to use when searching. For instance, what keyword phrase might people use to search for your website? Try this with your potential customers to find the best words for your content. In addition, it is highly recommended you use one key subject per page. Also, avoid irrelevant content completely.

Tip 2: Keyword DensityKeyword density refers to the number of keywords used in your content. It is recommended you use natural phrasing. Overusing the keyword to trick the search engine can also get you banned. Your first paragraph should be a strong opening to tell people what your page is about. This practice also helps search engines find your page.

Tip 3: Title of the PageGiving a descriptive name to the title of your page is essential. The first thing you notice on a search results page is the page titles of the results, so your titles must be related to the topic and appropriate. Best practice is to include the page’s keyword phrase in the title.

Tip 4: LinksLinks from other websites to your website determine the PageRank of your website. More links mean a higher PageRank. You can exchange links with other relevant websites or blogs. Furthermore, links to the content on your pages should include keyword phrases in the anchor text.

Tip 5: Social NetworkingPromoting your website on social media sites can affect your rank in search as well as bringing more traffic to your website. So, make sure you publish engaging titles and images that link back to your website.

Tip 6: Mobile FriendlyAccording to The Verge, more than half of Google searches are now done through mobile. If your website is not mobile-friendly, Google will rank you lower in search results pages. Google also indicates onsearch results pages if a website is mobile friendly or not. Therefore, don’t forget to make it responsive.

So, what is Infographic? According to Wikipedia, infographics are visual representations of information, data, or knowledge intended to present complex information quickly and clearly. In other words, infographics are a way of presenting information that is uncomplicated and easy to read.

You may have seen infographics while surfing the net or on social media. They are simple, easy to understand, and interesting to read. Nowadays, infographics rule the internet. According to Unbounce, the demand for infographics has increased by 800% in the last two years.

Recent research by WebMD stated that a human brain can register visual information 60,000 times faster than normal text. In addition, 65% of people are visual learners.

Infographics can certainly double your website traffic if you do them right. However, not all infographics go viral. There are some important factors you should take into account when creating infographics for marketing purposes.

The Method You UseHow you visually present the collected data in your infographic is a very important part of the process. You can use graphs or flow charts, for example, but make sure you consider how the audience will perceive the data.

Another important factor is the title you give your infographic. For instance, if the infographic is a how-to,you should title it accordingly.

Use Correct Statistical DataYour content should be statistically correct or verified from a reliable source. You won’t convince your audience with information based on your personal opinions so don’t base your infographic on them.

Develop a Unique ViewUse a unique approach for your infographic. For example, don’t follow the same format your competitors use. Instead, your infographics should have interesting graphics and characters that tell a unique story that is quick to read.

Pick the Right Topic
Choose interesting topics that people will love to read. It is not easy to grab the reader’s attention unless you have a trending topic to talk about. The best way to achieve this is to search for topics on Google Trends to find out what people are talking about.

Create Useful and Shareable InfographicsCreating useful infographics means providing readers with a deep insight into the topic that they can read and understand in short span of time.

According to Buzzsumo, content with images gets the most shares. In addition, infographics are among the most shared content on the internet as people share what they find useful.’

The Design of Your InfographicsMake sure you get your infographic professionally designed. After all, if you have good-quality content but don’t have an attractive design, your infographic will fail. This is often because people will be hesitant to share the infographic. So, it is best to get it designed by a professional graphic designer.

Generating an embed codeUse an embed code generator to make it easy for users to share and embed your infographic. When you do, your infographic will have a link back to your original social media page or website. This will bring you additional traffic.

ConclusionInfographics definitely increase traffic. It is best to use them to optimize your website for conversions so you generate more leads and sales. You can attach promotional messages with your infographics as well, to market your business.

Social Media is one of the world’s fastest growing industries. If you are not taking advantage of social media platforms you might be leaving lots of money on the table. Social media marketing strategies can be complex, however,because of the increase in the number of social media platformsthat are available. Furthermore, growing a social media account requires time and hard work.

Let’s take a look at some of the largest social media platforms, each of which can be used to grow your business and increase sales:

Facebook

Google+

Instagram

YouTube

LinkedIn

Reddit

Snapchat

Pinterest

Vine

Tumblr

Medium

Quora

Periscope

If you want to market your business or website through social media platforms, keep the following points in mind.

Find Your AudienceFirst and foremost, you must find your target customers. This requires proper research to discover where your customers are most active on social media. You must look if your target audience is made up of Facebook users rather than Twitter users, for example. This will save you energy and time.

Focus on quality, not quantityThe quality of the content you post on social media is very important. If your content is interesting,the user will share the post which will increase your reach. Therefore, it is important to have content your users will love to read and/or content that benefits them in some way. In addition, reposting a link from another website for the sake of keeping your page active will be of no use. Consequently, your content should be unique and compelling so that it gets clicks.

Appeal to InfluencersInfluencers on social media play an important role. You should find influencers that appeal to your customer profile, who reflect your business philosophy, and who have a high-quality audience. Connect with these influencers and create a positive relationship with them. If your content and services come across as interesting or show you are an authority on the matter, they could introduce your business to a range of new customers using their social media presence. This kind of exposure is very valuable since you donot have access to this audience on your own.

Be VisibleDon’t post something and then just disappear for a few weeks. Social media audiences have too many choices available and if you’re not visible, you can be cut from their list very easily. Make sure you have a clear calendar set out with a social media plan to publish content and posts on set days and at set times to encourage interaction with your users.

Be AvailableWhen users post queries and requests do not ignore them. Answer comments and messages as soon as possible with a solution or ask for their details so you can contact them immediately. Business pages where queries are ignored are a red flag for many customers who worry that they will be ignored should they make a purchase or order something. How you manage your social media accounts is a reflection on how you manage your business, even if your business runs smoothly and without issue – your users won’t see it that way. Many people turn to social media for reviews and to see how a company handles its customers, so put on a good show.

Be Consistent

Keeping your posts and messages consistent on social media pages can help you increase engagement with your customers. Moreover, it will help you develop trust with potential customers. For instance, if a customer comes to your Facebook page and sees that you have not posted in a month, they could assume you are out of business or are not a reliable company. In other words, not posting regularly gives a negative impression of your business. Therefore, it is necessary to be consistent and keep your social media page active.

In today’s fast-paced world, every business or individual has a basic website. Sadly, most of these websites are poorly designed or not focused on lead generation. These types of website are not going to help your business or your reputation.

So, the first question that comes to mind is: should your website focus on design or leads?

My website looks great but I am not generating enough sales
Studies of user behaviour by ImpleMedia have found that first impressions are 94% design-related. So, website design is important but if it is not generating sales or revenue then the design is of no use. We usually hear from customers that they want a fresh look for their website. If that is the only requirement there are many cheap solutions available. However, if you want to invest in a website to boost your business, the website should focus on generating leads and converting sales. For example, avoiding website designs that are too complex as they often turn visitors away. In fact, this is one of the reasons some incredibly good-looking websites fail to deliver sales.

Your website should focus on leads, not design
Investing in a well-designed website that builds interest and converts leads is a great way to boost your business. Therefore, your website must be designed correctly so it attracts more leads for your business.

According to research by Peep Laja, the founder of ConversionXL, it takes about 50 milliseconds for visitors to determine whether they like your website and will stay, or don’t like it and will leave. So, the first impression of your website matters. From the first impression, your visitors should immediately know that what they are looking for is likely to be on your website. In order to do that, let’s take a look at the tactics you can use on your website to get leads:

OffersInclude offers like downloadable eBooks, guides, and checklists on your website. Videos are also a great way to engage customers.

Smart CTAs
Place Calls-To-Action (CTAs) in strategic locations throughout your website. For example, they can be installed as a sidebar ad where the customer can fill out their contact information. This is a great way to generate leads when you have people looking to find out more information about your products or services.

Smart Content
Smart content provides the buyer with relevant content based on their interests or the stage they are at in the buying cycle. Smart content best practice is to move your website to a content management system so you can update the content on a daily basis. Also, writing a blog at least twice a week can help attract more traffic.

LayoutThe layout of your website is also critical to generating more leads. The right layout means the correct placement of content. This will help your visitors to concentrate on the areas that will help them the most. Some of the tips that you should keep in mind include:

Landing Pages
Landing pages are the last point of contact before a visitor fills out a form. They should use the same design as the rest of the pages with a few differences. Things you should keep in mind when designing landing pages include:

Keep the layout of the landing page simple

Don’t include the top navigation to reduce distractions

Use short forms to gather contact information

Make the form button text more creative than “Submit”. For example, use phrases like “Get Your eBook” or “Free Mock-up”

Book Your Free Consultation

Benjamin Hunter

Digital Consultant

Johntae Brett

Digital Consultant

Duncan Standley

Digital Marketing Strategist

About Our Company

Kiwi Website Design has had the privilege of working with more than 1000 Kiwi Businesses as well
as many exciting entrepreneurial and start-up companies in Australia,
USA and UK. No matter what size the client, we are dedicated to providing the highest
quality work and the greatest possible return on investment.